


The New Age

by TheWalkingGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Characters and relationships tagged as they appear, From the first episode to (hopefully) the last, Gen, POV Carl Grimes, The Walking Dead from Carl's POV, if he doesn't die before then
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-03 22:44:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11541960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: Carl stared down at the tubes and wires sticking out of his father's chest, trying to make sense of it all, but it was impossible, overwhelming. It felt like the world was ending.What he didn't realize at the time was that the world wasn't ending. Not yet, anyway.That came two weeks later.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Welcome to my new fic, in which I will attempt the daunting task of rewriting the entirety of the Walking Dead, from the perspective of one Carl Grimes. In order to make the task less daunting for myself, I'm going to try to stick to a schedule of one chapter per week. This is just a prologue, so most chapters will be longer (at least 2,000 words, usually). Since this chapter is so short, I will try to get the next one out this Sunday.
> 
> In case you cannot tell, Carl is my favorite character and I think his perspective on the apocalypse is fascinating, because he grows up during it. I was writing another fic that was a character study of him, but found myself frustrated with the shortcomings of not having delved into his story at an earlier point. So I finally decided "fuck it, I'm just going to write his story from the beginning." And here we are.
> 
> This will be as canon compliant as I can make it (I may tweak a few things that are continuity issues...like the effing timeline, but I promise it won't be anything major). Characters and relationships will be canon-based, and I will tag them as they appear. 
> 
> And without further ado, here is the prologue! Enjoy.

_Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

Blood pounded in his ears as Carl felt the panic swell inside him. He could hear the feet shuffling closer and he dug his fingernails into the desk, trying not to let his fear show. 

The shuffling was closer now. It was almost at him. He was next. This was it. There was no more time -

 _Fwip_. The stapled stack of papers landed on his desk.

"Good job, Carl." Mrs. Finch's voice warbled at him, her old eyes crinkled with kindness, before shuffling away to continue handing her sixth grade class their Geography tests back.

Carl snatched at his test, feeling the panic give way to relief at the glimmering red "A" in the top right corner. Relief then faded to pride.  _Yes_ _!_

He swiveled in his seat to catch his friend Mark's eye across the classroom. Mark returned the look, his face pulled into a grimace as he mimed slitting his throat.

Carl smiled and flashed the "A" in Mark's direction.

Mark scowled at him, pulling an imaginary pistol out of his pocket and shooting Carl, who clutched at his chest and fell over dramatically, slumping in his seat.

" _Boys_." Mrs. Finch's stern voice halted their interaction and they both sat up straight, with practiced expressions of innocence. She shook her head at them, not fooled for an instant, shuffling her way back to the front of the room.

"Alright. Most of you did very well and should be proud of yourself. But even those of you who did well made some simple mistakes I'd like to go over. The first is that many of you thought Washington D.C. was located in Washington State. Washington D.C. is not in any state, it is a district and it is located North of Virginia..."

* * *

Carl shut his locker, swinging his backpack onto his shoulders. Next to him, Mark was still griping about the test.

"...parents are gonna be so mad. Geez, Finch's tests are so hard. I have no idea how you get As on them."

Carl shrugged. "I just study."

"I do too! I just don't know what to  _study_." Mark scuffed his sneaker against the linoleum floor of the middle school hall, frustrated. 

"You wanna come over after school?" Carl offered, feeling bad for his friend. Mark's parents were really hard on him and would probably ground him for getting a B minus. "I can show you how I study...and you can put off telling your parents about the test."

Mark's face lit up. "Yeah! I just gotta ask my mom." He raced ahead, leaving Carl to exit the school alone.

Almost instantly, he spied his own mother in the parking lot. Carl waved, his face brightening when he saw Shane next to her, still in his uniform. Sometimes he and dad would stop by the school if they were on break and let him ride home in the police cruiser. 

 His mom jogged over. "Hey, baby."

"Hi mom!" Carl chirped, reaching into his folder to show her his test. "Look, I got an A on my geography test."

"That's great, sweetie." Lori's smile was tight and didn't reach her eyes.

Carl's face dropped slightly, perturbed by her lack of enthusiasm. Usually she'd give him a hug and tell him how proud she was of him. "Can Mark come over? I promised I'd help him study."

Lori sighed, kneeling down so that she was at his eye level. "Not today, honey. There's been...Carl, your father's in the hospital."

"What?" His voice sounded small and distant, like it didn't belong to him. "Is he okay?"

"No, baby, he's not." Lori face tightened even more and she bit her lip. "He was shot. He's alive, but he's at the hospital. Shane just came and told me."

Carl's head spun with all this information. Shot? His dad was shot? But that didn't happen, not to cops in their little town. His dad and Shane always joked about how they were glorified mall cops. They were supposed to be safe.

"Carl, listen to me." Lori instructed, putting her hand on his cheek, smudging the tears he hadn't realized were starting to fall. "He's gonna be okay, alright? He's strong, he's gonna make it. I need you to be strong for me, can you do that?"

He nodded, feeling the tears falling faster even as he did, then flung himself into his mother's arms, which tightened instinctively around him.

"That's my brave boy." Lori murmured into his hair. "He's going to be okay. I promise. He's going to be okay."

* * *

 Carl stared down at the figure laying on the hospital bed. 

He wanted to ask his mother if she was sure it was him. It had to be a mistake. The guy laying there was small and gaunt and pale and nothing like his sturdy, strong father. There were tubes and wires sticking out of him everywhere. 

Lori sobbed softly against Shane's shoulder, and he rubbed soothing circles on her arm. "He's gonna be okay, Lor." He murmured over and over again. "He's gonna be okay."

Carl looked from his mother back to his father and realized something. Shane was wrong. His mother was wrong. If this really  _was_ his father, then there was no way he was gonna be okay. Carl had never seen someone die but this had to be what death looked like. He couldn't even breathe on his own.

 _He's dead_. Carl told himself numbly, trying to force it to sink in.  _He's not coming back. He's dead_.

Reality crashed down around him and Carl fled the room, hearing his mother cry after him. All he could do was run, run as far away from that body as he could.

His father was dead and the world as he knew it was over.

* * *

It turned out, that he was wrong on both counts.

1.) His father was still alive.

2.) The world wasn't over. 

 

Not yet, anyway.


	2. Outbreak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've only watched a little of Fear the Walking Dead, so forgive me if the timeline of this is off. I figure that things would be different in a rural Georgia county than in L.A. too, so things probably went to shit a lot faster there than where Carl was at the time.

_"...woman charged with third-degree murder claims that the act was self-defense and the victim, a 47 year old man, had attempted to eat _her..."__

 

The sounds of the tv filtered through the crack under Carl's door, a sea of garbled, half-formed sentences as his mother flipped through the channels.

Since his father was shot nearly a week ago, the house had been quiet with both of them barely speaking to each other. Lori spent most of her time either at the hospital or sitting by the phone. She claimed she was waiting for the news that Rick had woken up, but Carl knew better.

She was waiting for the call that he'd died.

He could hear Shane's low voice conversing with Lori now and wondered when Shane had gotten there. Shane was around all the time now, either with them at the hospital or spending the night on their living room sofa. 

There was a gentle knock on his door.

"Carl? Baby, it's dinner time."

_"...a few more reports of similar strange and violent incidents, the latest occurring in Omaha, Nebraska..."_

"Shane, can you turn off the tv?" Lori asked as Carl trudged over to the dinner table. 

Carl wrinkled his nose as he took in the sight of the goopy thing Lori spooned onto his plate. "What is that?"

"Chicken pot pie. Mrs. Jennings brought it over."

"It looks gross."

" _Carl_ ," Lori sighed, reaching her hand toward him, while Shane took the seat next to Carl. "It's not gross, I promise. Now come on, let's say Grace." 

With a heavy sigh, Carl took the handed offered toward him and Lori squeezed three times with the silent message:  _I love you._

Carl squeezed back.

"God, thank you for the food you've put on the table before us. Thank you for being with us during this difficult time and for watching over Rick. Please continue to watch over him, so that he can wake up and be with us again soon. Amen."

Carl frowned, but said nothing, picking at the goopy pie on his plate. He took a bite and immediately made a face. 

" _Blegh_."

Shane patted his shoulder sympathetically. "C'mon man, choke it down and we'll get ice cream on the way to the hospital."

"Do I have to go?" Carl asked without thinking.

Lori's fork dropped to the table. After a moment, she finally composed herself, mouth in a firm line. "Yes," she ordered sternly. "Your father needs us both to be there. He needs his family around so that he can get better."

"But what if he doesn't get better?"

Lori's face quivered.

"Man, you can't think like that," rebuked Shane, squeezing Carl's shoulder. "Your dad's gonna come around. Just you wait and see."

* * *

 

The hospital waiting room smelled like lemons, the fake kind from disinfectant that always made Carl's nose itch. He sneezed, fingers slipping on the controls of his gameboy, causing him to make his Bulbasaur jump at the wrong moment.

"Crap!"

"Language." Lori scolded halfheartedly, her eyes glued to the T.V. screen. 

  _"...man was shot by Los Angeles Police after he devoured a cat and attempted to attack police officers..."_

Shane shook his head. "Crazy," he muttered, rubbing his hands through his hair. "Whole country's gone crazy this week. Reckon it could be a mad cow disease outbreak or somethin?"

"I'm not sure," murmured Lori quietly in return, then her eyes darted over to the doorway as Rick's doctor entered the waiting room.

"Mrs. Grimes, Officer Walsh? Can you come with me please?"

"Wait here," Lori ordered Carl, pressing a kiss to her forehead as she got up. "Do not leave this chair."

Lori and Shane followed the doctor out of the room, leaving Carl alone in the waiting room with only one other inhabitant - an old man sitting in the corner, reading a newspaper.

Bored with his game after a few more minutes, Carl set it in his lap and looked up at the TV. It sucked that it was always playing the news, instead of cartoons or a movie or something people might actually wanna  _watch_.

_"...this incident is the eleventh in a series of similar incidents this week..."_

Carl watched the flashing lights of police cars on the screen behind the reporter, catching sight of a white sheet in the corner. A dead body.

"So what're you here for kid?" Carl jumped in his chair, startled when the old man addressed him.

"What?" He asked nervously.

"Why are you here?" The old man asked him. His voice was kind and patient.

Carl scuffed his shoe against the linoleum floor. "My dad."

"Is he sick?"

Carl shook his head. "He was shot. He's having surgery." Or, he was. The doctor coming to talk to Shane and Lori probably meant that the surgery was over...or that his dad was dead.

"That's good." Carl shot the man an incredulous look. "Not that he was shot," the old man clarified. "But that he's not sick. There's a bad disease going around. Some sort of flu, making people go crazy. So it's good he's not sick."

Carl looked back up at the TV. "Like the guy on the news?" He asks.

"Maybe. The government isn't talking about it, but there's definitely a pattern." The old man fixed him with a serious look. "You should be careful."

Something about the way he said that made the hairs on Carl's arms stand up. "Why are you here?" He asked the old man. 

The old man gave a grim smile. "My wife's sick."

"Carl." Lori's voice cut into their conversation, and Carl swung his head in her direction. "Everything went okay with the surgery. It's late and it's a school night, so Shane's going to take you home."

Carl stood up and followed Shane out of the hospital room. He turned back to look at the old man. "I hope your wife feels better."

"Me too kid." The old man replied sadly. "Me too."

* * *

 

"Hey guys, look at this!"

Carl turned around in his stool, away from the frog he was supposed to be dissecting. At the next table over, Anthony Harris, the only kid in the grade with an iPhone, was showing a small crowd of students something on his phone.

From a distance, Carl could barely see anything on the tiny screen. He tried to scoot closer to get a better look -

"That'll be mine for the rest of the day, Mr. Harris." Mr. Bennet, their science teacher, snatched the phone out of Anthony's hand.

"But Mr. Bennet, this guy got shot ten times and he kept walking!" Anthony protested.

Mr. Bennet sighed heavily. "The power of special effects, Mr. Harris." He commented wryly. "It's fake."

"It's already got over a million views on YouTube!"

"I promise you, it's a hoax." Mr. Bennet slipped the phone into his pocket. "A waste of your time. But what  _isn't_ a waste of your time is this class. Everyone, back to your seats. And please  _focus_."

But focus turned out to be impossible, and the rest of the class was spent with whispers passing between the students.

"...did you see his eyes?"

"...like he didn't even feel it..."

"...not even human..."

* * *

_"...riots continue to break out in cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, D.C. and Los Angeles as police shootings are at an all time high..."_

"Should we be worried?" Lori asked Shane, biting her nails as she paced in front of the tv.

"Whatever's going on, it's only in the cities right now, and it seems to be mostly on the west coast and up north." Shane replied, his hand resting on his gun. "They'll send in the national guard, the military to sort out whatever is going on. We're far enough away from all of it, we should be okay. We should be safe here."

"Are people getting sick?" Carl asked timidly from his place on the couch, causing both Lori and Shane to turn to him. "That's what the old man at the hospital said."

Lori sighed, walking over to him and running her hands through his hair. "We don't know what's going on, baby."

"He said there's a flu and it's making people crazy."

"Could be." Shane agreed. "Or it could be people panicking over nothing."

"And Sheriff Granholm says he doesn't know anything?" Lori pressed.

"Nothing. The only thing he's gotten from the state is about the curfew. Either they don't know what's happening either, or they don't think we need to know."

_"...inhabitants of the cities are urged to remain calm and stay indoors, until further notice..."_

* * *

"Do you want the gushers or the fruit by the foot for your snack?" 

"Gushers."

Lori finished packing up Carl's lunchbox and handed it to him, so he could stuff it into his backpack, before shepherding him toward the door. Carl sat down on the bench near the front door, pulling out his sneakers from the shoe tray and starting to lace them up.

 _Bring! Bring!_ Lori's cell phone rang out. 

"Shane?"

 _"Did you take Carl to school yet?"_ Shane's tinny voice sounded through the phone speaker.

"We're almost out the door. Did you want us to pick up-"

 _"Lori, no, no, listen to me. Do_ NOT  _leave the house. Stay in the house, lock the doors, stay away from the windows."_

"Shane, what the hell is going -"

_"Lori, damnit, stop. Just stay in the house. I can't explain right now, just don't leave the house. I'll get there as soon as I can."_

"Shane?" Lori demanded, eyes wide with fright. But there was no response.

Carl gaped at her, his left shoe hanging loosely off his foot. "Mom?"

Lori snapped out of her stupor and quickly bolted the front door shut. "Carl, go in the bathroom. I'm going to lock the doors."

"Wait, mom-"

"I'll be there in a second, just get in the bathroom!" Lori shrieked, pushing him further inside.

Carl tripped over his untied laces and stumbled toward the bathroom near the kitchen, shutting the door. He could hear Lori frantically running through the house, locking all of the doors, before joining Carl in the bathroom and locking that door too.

"Mom, what's going on?" Carl asked, his heart pounding with fear.

"I don't know Carl, we have to wait until Shane gets here." Lori whispered back.

"But when is he coming?"

"I don't  _know_ , Carl!" Snapped Lori, her voice rising with hysteria.

Carl felt tears started to leak out of his eyes, and Lori instantly melted with remorse.

"Oh, honey, baby, I'm sorry." She soothed, cradling him against her chest. "I'm sorry, I know you're scared. I don't know what's happening, I just know that we have to be quiet. We just have to be quiet and wait for Shane to come."

They stayed huddled in the bathroom for hours, so long that Carl eventually couldn't hold his pee and had to go while Lori was still in the room, to his eternal embarrassment.

Finally, there was a scuffling sound near the door. Lori tensed, then relaxed as she recognized the distinctive sound of a key unlocking the front door.

"Lori?" Shane called.

"In here." Lori opened the door, and Carl followed out after her. His eyes widened at the sight of Shane's bloody uniform and Lori gasped. "What happened?"

Shane shut the door behind him, locking it. His pupils were blown wide, hair a mess. "It's here, Lori. The disease in the cities, it's here. This woman, she got it, and she started attacking people. She was..." His voice dropped to a whisper, obviously trying to keep Carl from overhearing. "Lori, she was trying to  _eat_ them. She came at me and I shot her and she just kept coming like she didn't even feel it."

Lori clamped a hand over her mouth. "What is it?" She whispered, horrified.

"I don't know, but you shouldn't leave the house. It could be airborne, it could be in the water. Just drink bottled water. I've gotta go-"

Lori's nails dug into his arm. "You can't just leave us here!" She hissed. 

Shane tried to gently remove her hand. "I have to. They need me. Lori, there's reports coming in from all over the county. We've gotta try to contain this."

" _We_ need you." She retorted. Her voice dropped so low that Carl couldn't hear anymore, so he tried to discretely creep closer. "...can't protect him... _please_ Shane. Please stay."

Shane looked past Lori's shoulder at Carl. His shoulders slumped. "Fine. We'll stay here and try to wait it out. The state, they'll send reinforcements in. They have to." He pulled Lori into a hug. "I'l keep you both safe. I promise."

* * *


	3. The End of the World

_“…spread rapidly. Citizens are advised to be on alert for the following symptoms: fever, abnormal behavior, white pupils…”_

The tv stopped working the day before yesterday. Since then, Shane’s radio had been sitting on the living room table, crackling with the same information over and over again.

The disease was spreading. Stay inside. Watch for symptoms. 

If someone comes near you and you think they might be infected…run.

The people on the radio were saying a bunch of scary things, but so far nothing had happened. Everything was quiet outside the house, except for a couple of police sirens that cut through the silent air. 

It sort of felt like a tornado drill at school. At first everything was scary and sort of a little exciting. But after a little while, the antsiness started to kick in and the scariest thing about the whole situation was being cooped up with nothing to do.

Basically, Carl was bored. He wasn’t allowed to leave the house, he wasn’t allowed to call his friends, he wasn’t allowed to raise his voice above a whisper without Shane or Lori frantically shushing him. 

He wasn’t even allowed to play with his gameboy, which Lori had made very clear when she snatched it out of his hands (in the middle of a huge battle that he was almost winning!) and took out the batteries.

“We have to save the batteries, we don’t have that many in the house,” she informed him when he complained.

“Can’t we just go to the store?”

Lori went very still. “Carl, we can’t leave the house remember?”

Carl rolled his eyes. “I know, but after.”

“We don’t know when that’s going to be.” Lori carded her fingers through his hair. “It could be a few days…it could be weeks, sweetie. And now that the power’s out we need all our batteries for our flashlights and Shane’s radio. So no gameboy.”

He sighed, looking down at the now dead screen.

Lori ruffled his hair fondly. “C’mon, let’s play Monopoly.”

Since then, they had played three and a half games of Monopoly. Lori kept losing, badly, since she was distracted and worried. Shane wasn’t much better, since he kept leaving the room to take a call or listen to something on the radio that he didn’t want them to hear.

“Shane, you owe me one hundred twenty.” Carl nudged him, but Shane was totally immersed in looking at something on his phone. “ _Shane_.”

“Sweetie, leave him be.” Lori scolded him, sweeping her concerned gaze to Shane. “Anything?”

Shane shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “They’re not…they’re pulling in all the police in the nearby counties into Atlanta.”

“Maybe it’s worse there?”

“No, Macon’s totally overrun…I think they’re giving up on the rural areas. Lori, we’ve got to get to Atlanta.”

“What about Rick?”

“We’ll get him there,” Shane promised, clamping his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call the hospital right now and get him on a helicopter there.”

“Wait,” Carl interrupted, his eyes wide. “We’re going to Atlanta? Why?”

Both adults turned to him, their faces a mix of annoyance at being interrupted, and fear. “It’s not safe here anymore, bud,” explained Shane. “That disease that’s going around, making people act crazy, it’s getting worse.”

“But…” his head swam with the information. “But I thought we just had to wait for the government. I thought they were gonna send in refor-refor-” Carl struggled to remember the word that Shane had used.

“Reinforcements, yeah, I know. Well, they’re not, they’re sending them to Atlanta to protect the people there first. So that’s where we need to go.”

Carl looked over at Lori in dismay. “Can’t we just stay in the house though? Isn’t it dangerous outside?”

Lori squeezed his hand. “We’re safe in here for right now, but if things get more dangerous outside we don’t want to be trapped here. We’d run out of food and water.”

“Plus,” added Shane darkly. “We don’t know how much longer we’ll be safe in here. If one of those crazy people manages to get in here, we’re all dead.”

“ _Shane_ ,” Lori hissed between her teeth, casting a furtive look down at Carl. “Don’t scare him.”

“You can’t coddle him, Lor, he needs to hear these things,” Shane muttered back in a voice Carl was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Look at him, he’s scared enough, he doesn’t need you to…” Lori glanced back at Carl, who was clearly listening to their conversation with wide eyes. “Sweetie, go to your room for a second, Shane and I need to have a private discussion.”

With a heavy sigh, Carl went to his bedroom, flopping on his bed and staring up at the ceiling. It was covered with glow in the dark stars, which his dad had put up for his seventh birthday. His eyes followed the curve of the big dipper to the North Star - his dad had spent hours trying to make the stars as accurate as possible so that Carl could learn to easily find constellations in the night sky.

_“…have to put Carl first…”_

_“…not leaving without my husband…”_

_“…may not have a choice…”_

Carl stared at the ceiling, tracing the beak of Corvus the tattling crow. He had no idea what the name meant: his dad had told him the stories of some of the constellations, but said the rest had to wait until he was older. There had been a lot of things like that, actually. _When you’re older, Carl. I’ll tell you someday._

“You’re a damn liar.” He whispered, the swear word foreign on his tongue. It was the first time he’d ever cursed aloud, he’d never dared to before. Even now, Carl expected his mom to burst into the room with a bar of soap at the ready. 

But nothing.

It was there, in the quiet of his bedroom, that Carl realized maybe the adults around him didn’t know everything. He could get away with swearing as long as his mother didn’t hear it. His dad probably didn’t even know half the stories of the constellations. Shane was just as much in the dark about what was going on as the rest of them. 

And no one knew what the hell they were supposed to do.

* * *

“Carl, I said to pack _light_. No legos.”

“But I can take it apart,” Carl protested, even though he really didn’t want to do that. It had taken him and dad _forever_ to build the Death Star, mostly because they’d lost the instructions halfway through the process.

“ _No_. And you don’t need your nerf guns either. Just pack your clothes, we don’t have that much room in the car.”

Carl sulked, setting down the Death Star gently on the floor. “You’re bringing all those pictures,” he complained. 

“These are important.” Lori explained, snapping the lid shut on yet another box. “If something happens to the house while we’re gone I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

“If you leave one of the boxes of pictures I could fit my death star.” He tried to negotiate, but Lori was having none of it.

“Sweetie, these are memories. That’s just a bunch of plastic,” she explained in a gentle voice. “Someday you’ll be glad that I saved these pictures.”

“But-”

Carl’s words were cut off by the a loud _bang_ that echoed down the street.

Lori froze.

“Was that a _gun_?” Carl asked her, moving to the window to see.

Immediately, Lori sprang into action, shoving him back from the window. “Stay down!” She hissed at him, peeking through the curtains. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of something. 

A sharp crackling sound rose up, like firecrackers on the fourth of July. Suddenly Lori was throwing her body over Carl’s pressing him to the floor. 

“Mom?!”

“Shhh baby, shhh.” Lori’s voice was tight with terror. “Just stay down. Don’t move.”

Heart pounding, Carl tried to stay still even as the floorboards dug uncomfortably into his cheek. The firecracker sound got louder and Lori let out a low moan, clutching him close. She was trembling so hard that Carl felt himself start to shake too.

The sound started to dim, then eventually disappeared. But Lori kept him pressed to the floor, either unwilling or unable to move. 

There was a scratching noise at the door, then a bang as it was flung open.

“Lori? Carl?”

Finally, Lori lifted herself off of Carl. “Shane?” She called back, scrambling to her feet just as Shane entered the room, wild eyed. “There was - there were soldiers in the streets - they were shooting -”

“They were at the hospital.” Shane grabbed the box Lori had been packing off the floor. “We’ve gotta go now, we need to move.”

“Wait, Rick -” Lori grabbed onto his uniform sleeve. “Where’s Rick? Did they evacuate him?”

Shane shook his head. “C’mon grab your stuff, we’re leaving -”

“ _Rick,_ Shane!”

“Lori, we’ve gotta go!”

“I’m not leaving without Rick!” Lori screamed. 

“He’s dead, Lori!”

Lori froze.

Carl pushed himself up from the floor, staring at Shane with wide eyes.

Shane refused to make eye contact with either of them, wiping at his face. “He’s dead. I tried to get him out but he…he wasn’t breathing. His heart wasn’t beating, Lor. He’s -” He broke off with a sob. “He’s dead. I couldn’t get him out. He’s dead.”

Lori shook her head. “No.” She whispered in a low voice. “He can’t - not Rick. He can’t be dead.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The sound of firecrackers - no, _gunshots_ \- was getting louder, but somehow it sounded far away. Like it was underwater.

“We gotta go.”

“No…Rick…”

“Lori, we need to move now! Carl, come on.”

Carl blinked and suddenly Shane was in front of him, yanking on his arm. “C’mon bud, let’s go. Get in the car.”

He shook his head, trying to shake the water out of it. “My dad’s dead?” 

Shane put both hands on his shoulders. “Yes, but you can’t do this right now. Okay, we’ve got to get out of here. _Lori, now!”_

And then Lori was there, propelling him forward, pushing him into the car. Carl fumbled with his seatbelt, trying to push all the boxes aside so he could get at the buckle.

Shane pulled out of the driveway and accelerated on the gas, propelling Carl forward into the seat in front of him.

“Carl, get your damn seatbelt on jesus!”

They flew down the abandoned road, going faster than Carl had ever seen a car go outside of tv, until Lori abruptly screamed out, “Shane, look out!”

Shane slammed on the breaks, coming to a halt just feet away from a body in the road.

“Are they dead?”

“No - they’re moving. We have to help them!”

“Stay in the car.” Shane ordered, flipping the passenger seat lock just as Lori started for her door handle. He exited the car, approaching the prone figure with his gun drawn. Carl leaned forward in his seat.

There was a terrible, strangled hissing sound and Shane suddenly jumped back with a shout.

_Bang!_

The hissing sound stopped. Shane stared down at the ground, stricken.

Lori put a hand over her mouth.

After a few seconds, Shane got back in the car and started it up again. He backed up, then steered around the figure lying in the road.

Carl craned his neck, trying to get a better look as they passed the body. It was a boy, around his age, lying motionless with a puddle of blood rapidly forming around his head.

In the passenger seat, Lori began to sob quietly.

* * *

 

After about an hour stuck in the highway traffic, Carl finally mustered the courage to ask:

“Shane?”

“Yeah, buddy?” Shane replied distractedly, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

“Why did you shoot that kid?”

Shane stopped drumming. He glanced at Lori, who had stopped crying awhile ago and had since been utterly silent.

“That wasn’t a kid, Carl. That was one of those things that’s been attacking people on the news. I had to put it down so it wouldn’t attack anyone else.”

“But I thought it was just sick people attacking people.” Carl argued, confused. “They’re not people?”

Shane sighed. “Not anymore. See, when people get sick with whatever it is that’s going around, they don’t get better. They die. But they don’t die like normal people do, they still walk around and attack people, and try to kill ‘em.”

“But why?”

“Ain’t that the question. Nobody knows. But the only thing you need to know is if you ever see one of those things, you get away from it any way you can. Don’t let it touch you.”

Carl mused on this, his head spinning with a thousand questions. “So if…if dad’s dead does that mean he’s one of those things now?” He asked quietly.

“No, baby.” Lori spoke for the first time in hours, her voice hoarse. “He wasn’t sick so he won’t turn into one of those things. He’s just gone.”

“Good.” Lori’s head swiveled around and she stared at him in disbelief. Carl quickly backtracked. “I mean that he’s not gonna be one of those things, not that he’s dead.”

Lori continued to stare at him and Carl felt himself squirm under her scrutiny. He knew she was judging him, probably upset that _he_ wasn’t more upset about Rick’s death. Carl didn’t want to tell her that he’d already accepted his dad was dead awhile ago, he knew she’d be angry for not having faith like she did. Maybe she’d even blame him. Maybe if he’d prayed for his dad like he was supposed to he would’ve woken up.

Carl turned to look out the window, trying to avoid his mom’s gaze. To his surprise, he found a pair of eyes staring back at him from the car beside theirs - a girl his age. Carl gave her a small wave. 

The girl immediately shrunk away from the window like a startled deer. 

With a sigh, Carl slumped back into his seat. But then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The girl was waving back.

Sitting up straight again, Carl formed his right hand into a fist and hit it against his open left palm in the universal signal to initiate a ‘rock paper scissors’ game. The girl immediately caught on and her lips quirked into a smile as she too hit her fist against her hand.

_Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot._

The girl’s tiny smile turned into a full-blown grin as she mimed cutting his paper with her scissors. 

* * *

After four hours of going absolutely nowhere, Carl needed to pee desperately so Shane accompanied him into the woods on the side of the highway. When they came back, the inhabitants of the car next to theirs were outside stretching their legs and Lori was attempting to make conversation with the girl’s mother.

“…from King’s county. Where are y’all from?”

The girl’s mother, a slight grey haired woman, glanced nervously at her husband. “Just outside Tallulah Falls.”

“Oh, I heard it’s beautiful up there. I always wanted to visit.”

The man snorted in derision. “Damn tourists are ruining the area.” He grumbled. “Used to be so quiet now you can’t get a moment of peace.” His eyes narrowed as he spotted Shane and Carl returning. “Well, look here. Think you can escort us to the front of the line, officer?”

“Wouldn’t have been sitting here for the last several hours if I could.” Shane replied, resting a hand on Carl’s shoulder protectively. Something about his body language made it immediately clear to Carl that he did not like this man.

Lori looked between them. “This is Carol, Ed, and their daughter Sophia. That’s Shane, and my son Carl.”

“Nice to meet you.” The woman, Carol, smiled kindly at Carl. “And how old are you, young man?”

“Nearly twelve.” He replied automatically, peering at Sophia curiously. 

“Sophia just turned twelve a couple months ago, what a coincidence.” Carol nudged her daughter forward. “Do you two want to play? I packed a couple board games.”

“Waste of valuable car space,” Ed muttered.

Lori’s face lit up appreciatively. “Thank you, that’s so thoughtful. Go on and play, hun.”

Normally, Carl found boardgames boring. After a few hours of nothing but silent rock paper scissors though checkers seemed like the most exciting thing in the world. They played as the sky fell dark and more people continued to exit their cars, wandering around the highway restlessly as it became increasingly clear that none of them were moving anytime soon.

Helicopters passed overhead and Carl’s stomach churned with hunger. They’d eaten the last of their snacks hours ago. “I’m hungry,” he complained.

“I know Carl, we all are,” sighed Lori.

“Why don't I get him something to eat?” Carol suggested kindly. “Ed’s into all this survival stuff. We’ve got enough MREs to feed a small army.”

Carl had no idea what an MRE was, but he didn’t care as long as it involved food. He glanced at Lori hopefully, who gave Carol a grateful smile. “I’d sure appreciate it.”

“No trouble.” She slunk off to go rummage through the car while Lori went to check on Shane, who was monitoring the radio.

Distracted by the thought of food, Carl accidentally made a stupid move that allowed Sophia to capture three of his pieces in a row. Any of his friends would have gloated about it, but she just gave a shy smile. She clearly wasn’t a very talkative person.

Carol and Lori both made their way back to them at the same time. “Ed must have forgotten to pack those MREs,” Carol said awkwardly, handing Lori a couple of bars. “I found these in my purse.”

For some reason, Lori tried to wave her off. “It’s all right. Listen, do you mind keeping an eye on Carl for a minute? Shane and I are gonna go scout up ahead a little bit and see if we can find someone that knows what's going on.”

Carl jerked to attention immediately. “I want to come with you.”

Lori shook her head, hugging him to her. “Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh.”

“Hey, we’ll be back before you know it,” Shane assured him, ruffling his hair.  “Okay little man?”

Recognizing defeat, Carl deflated and nodded his head. He watched as they wove through the gridlocked cars, disappearing from sight.

“Your dad’s nice.” Sophia spoke up unexpectedly. Carl was so shocked to hear her talk that it took him a moment to recognize what she’d said. 

Then it registered. “Shane’s not my dad.” But as soon as he thought about it, he realized how the situation must look to an outsider and he sighed. “My dad’s dead.”

Before Sophia could react, a distant _boom_ like thunder sounded from the direction of the city. Sophia and Carl jumped back, startled, and Carol put her hands on their shoulders protectively.

“What was that?” She asked Ed fearfully.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? I’m seeing the same thing you are.”

Carl flinched at the harsh language. He’d only ever heard Shane say it, once, when they nearly got T-boned by some idiot running a red light, and he’d apologized profusely to Rick for saying it in front of Carl.

“Ed, don’t -” Carol started to rebuke, then shrunk when Ed glared at her.

“You trying to tell me what to do? I swear to god, I’ll -”

He was cut off by another louder booming sound. Ed snarled and made his way over to the car, pulling something out of the back seat. A shot gun. “Stay here, I’m gonna see what’s going on.”

“Shane and Lori already went to - ”

“You gonna trust a pig and his whore with our lives, woman? I said stay here, damnit!”

Carl’s skin prickled with indignation. He didn’t know what those names meant, but he recognized instinctively that they were not flattering, so he narrowed his eyes at Ed’s back as he left.

“Is it a storm, mommy?” Sophia questioned. 

“Maybe baby. I don’t know.”

“I’ve never heard thunder that loud,” continued Sophia, clearly more talkative now that Ed wasn’t around.

“I don’t - ”

Up ahead, people started screaming.

Carl leapt off the truck bed, only to be held back by Carol’s bony grip on his collar. 

“Stay here!”

“But my mom’s up there!” 

“She’ll be back, I promise, just please stay here!” Carol begged, refusing to release him. She was deceptively strong and Carl found that he couldn’t squirm out of her grasp. He could only watch in horror as the people around them abandoned their cars, running away from the direction that Lori and Shane had headed off to.

Then, suddenly, they were there, white-faced, with a shaken-looking Ed in tow. “What’s going on?” Carol demanded fearfully.

Lori shook her head frantically, indicating Sophia and Carl, but Ed ignored her. “They just bombed the whole fucking city.” He blurted. “They’re burning Atlanta to the ground.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long period of inactivity, guys! I hope you enjoyed this chapter.


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